IMPACT: International Journal of Research in

Humanities, Arts and Literature (IMPACT: IJRHAL)

ISSN (P): 2347–4564; ISSN (E): 2321–8878
Vol. 7, Issue 11, Nov 2019, 15–22
© Impact Journals

INTERCONNECTEDNESS OF THE LOCAL AND GLOBAL IN KINGSOLVER’S SELECT

WRITINGS

P. Rajitha Venugopal
Ph.D. Research Scholar, Department of English, Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi, India

Received: 14 Nov 2019 Accepted: 20 Nov 2019 Published: 27 Nov 2019

ABSTRACT

Ecofeminists and Deep Ecologists reject the androcentric and anthropocentric hubris and espouse a theory of
interconnectedness between all forms of life on earth. Ecofeminists also oppose all forms of oppression across the
intersectional identities of race, class, gender, region, and nation. While the interconnectedness can be seen as a
feeling of empathy towards all oppressed beings, nature and animals included, it can also be extended to the realm
of, as is apparent in, the causes and effects of ecological phenomena on a global scale. The proposed paper would
attempt to read Barbara Kingsolver’s select essays from High Tide in Tucson and Small Wonder that discuss a range
of interconnected environmental issues ranging from species/habitat/wilderness conservation, industrial capitalism-
induced consumer culture, its effect such as massive industrial pollution, global climate change and their disastrous
repercussions. Kingsolver is a contemporary American author who sets most of her works in the southern/ south
western United States, around local socio-ecological issues. However, they can also be related to global
environmental issues, as well as local issues in any part of the globe, thereby emphasizing the idea of
interconnectedness in terms of causes and effects. Ironically, it is also in the same concept of interconnectedness that
Kingsolver pins her hopes on. The present paper would attempt a reading of Kingsolver’s essays in the framework of
environmental justice theories.

KEYWORDS: Kingsolver’s, Deep Ecologists & Ecofeminists

INTRODUCTION

Barbara Kingsolver is a contemporary American author of fiction and non-fiction, who is widely recognized as an
ecofeminists writer. Her novels are set around local socio-ecological issues which are also implications of global issues.
She brings together a wide range of environmental predicaments that challenge the current world such as toxic pollution,
species extinction, habitat depletion, industrial capitalism-induced consumer culture, its effect such as massive industrial
pollution, global climate change and their disastrous repercussions. As much as she discusses the ecological, she also looks
at the socio-cultural causes and effects of these ecological challenges.

The objective of this paper is to read Kingsolver’s select works and analyse her treatment of environmental issues
with the awareness of interconnectedness between humans and nature, thereby placing the natural with the cultural, the
ecological with the socioeconomic and the political. The paper begins with discussing the interconnection of environmental
issues with the realms of socioeconomic, political and the cultural. The second part of the paper discusses how Kingsolver
attempts to make positive use of these interconnections. Through these two analysis, it can be seen how Kingsolver’s

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 16 P. Rajitha Venugopal

efforts can be seen as small act of resistance and responsibility toward one’s local and global society and ecosystem. A
realization of these interconnections is severely pertinent today in the wake of global climate change.

Critics like Lawrence Buell and Ramachandra Guha have identified the different waves of American
environmentalism, with the first wave constituting the celebration of the American landscape and wilderness from the
nineteenth century to mid-twentieth century. Some of the representatives of this wave include John Muir among the
preservationists and Gifford Pinchot among the conservationists; the Transcendental school of Philosophy held a
meditative approach to nature. The second wave of environmentalism is said to have begun with the publication of Rachel
Carson’s Silent Spring in 1962. While the first wave celebrated nature and the wilderness for either their serenity, as a
resort for man worn out by civilization, the second wave in the 1960s saw nature or environment, not merely as a romantic
or philosophical concept of a pristine solace to be worshiped and admired, but as the immediate air, water and land that we
use, the food we eat and our very survival on this planet. Carson’s book came out as a revelation that the metaphorical
silence of the Spring season is directly related to man’s indiscrete exploitation of nature for profits. While there was a new
environmental awakening in America in the 1960s, ironically the decade also witnessed the boom of Green Revolution
with its purportedly benevolent claim to feed the hungry population of the world, especially the Third World. The entire
power dynamics that followed up to Globalization and after has strengthened the hegemony of America, in particular, and
Global North, in general, at the expense of the lives of people of the Global South.

Ecofeminists and Deep Ecologists reject the androcentric and anthropocentric hubris and espouse a theory of
interconnectedness between all forms of life on earth. Ecofeminists also oppose all forms of oppression across the
intersectional identities of race, class, gender, region, and nation. While the interconnectedness can be seen as a feeling of
empathy towards all oppressed beings, nature and animals included, it can also be extended to the realm of (as apparent in)
the causes and effects of ecological phenomena on a global scale. Kingsolver discusses environmental degradation
manifested in depletion of wilderness, habitat destruction, pollution of air, water, soil, the decline and impending demise of
local agricultural economy, and the Big industry which has usurped agriculture (agribusiness), its impact on the health of
the ecosystem, human health, food cultures, and consumption patterns, which, in turn, have their footprint on the
environment. She also comments on the role of the political economy, media, education, and orthodox religion in the
context of dissemination of knowledge and attitudes towards the environment. Kingsolver uses the text, both fiction and
nonfiction, as the site where she brings all her politics into play, and convey scientific matters in easily comprehensible
narratives to make these ideas accessible to common people, as these are issues that concern them. Her treatment of
interconnected issues echo Barry Commoner’s Four Laws of Ecology which he discusses in his work The Closing Circle -
The laws are as follows: 1) Everything is connected to everything else 2) Everything must go somewhere 3) Nature knows
best 4) There is no free lunch. Kingsolver’s essays constantly remind each of these laws in many ways.

In an essay titled “The Patience of a Saint”, she describes a visit to a dying river San Pedro in Arizona. She
discusses the harmful effects of industrial agriculture, pollution, and indiscrete exploitation of natural resources, which
have destroyed the biodiversity of the place, and has affected the local economy. In another essay titled “A Forest’s Last
Stand,” Kingsolver describes her travel through Mexican countryside, and notes of her observations about the living
heritage of the ancient Mayan civilization in its language, customs, and traditional attires. The position of Mexican national
economy, enmeshed in the regional and transnational economy dominated by the US, is referred to, through the references
of the PEMEX (Petroleo Mexicano) gas station, and the hoarding of an agri-chemical company. Mexico’s position as a

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 Interconnectedness of the Local and Global in Kingsolver’s Select Writings 17

member of NAFTA (North-Atlantic Free Trade Agreement), the trade policies of which will be dominated by the US,
although Mexico at one point of time used to produce plenty of petroleum. Yet another point of discussion is the
description of a village of Guatemalan refugee families engaged in subsistence farming in the borders of a Bio-reserve
area. Juxtaposition is a common technique Kingsolver uses for showing the contrasts. In this case, the dependent state of
Mexico on NAFTA is discussed between two thriving local and tradition-based self-sufficient economies. Thereby, the
difference between the global and the local, the big and the small economy is brought out vividly.

In an essay titled “A Fist in the Eye of God,” Kingsolver discusses three important areas that are relevant for the
dissemination of awareness or ignorance about environmental degradation. She discusses religion, education, and science
in the context of the present environmental concerns. Her choice of these topics is important because these are raging and
controversial issues even in present day America. Historically, since the publication of Darwin’s evolutionary theory,
science and religion, evolutionary theory and the story of biblical Genesis have been perceived as binaries. But Kingsolver
perceives the two as not binaries but related concepts, where, evolution, according to her, is “a fine creation story, a sort of
quantifiable miracle” (Animal Vegetable Miracle 334). She conflates the two seemingly contradictory realms by describing
the evolution as an unfolding of the wonder of creation. Juxtaposed with this, it is her fierce criticism of some of the state
legislatures that banned the teaching of evolution in schools of Tennesse in different periods of time, for over a century.
The most controversial of them being the Scopes Trial of 1926, and the latest one being in 2012 - also dubbed popularly as
the Monkey law1. As a result, she finds that, people are deprived of a scientific temper, basic critical thinking, or openness
to new thoughts. She writes,

In a bizarre recent trend, a number of states have limited or even outright banned the teaching of evolution in high
schools, and many textbooks for the whole century, in turn, have wimped out on the subject. As a consequence, an entire
generation of students is arriving in college unprepared to comprehend or pursue good science. We dilute and toss at our
peril. Scientific illiteracy in our population is leaving too many of us unprepared to discuss or understand much of the
danger we are wreaking on our atmosphere, our habitat, and even the food that enters our mouth. (96)

Kingsolver illustrates the dangers of this situation in her novel Flight Behaviour, which discusses the topic of climate
change, and the debate about whether climate change is real or not. The point that she tries to make is that the very gesture of
acknowledging that climate change is real itself might prompt a shift in thinking in the way one perceives one’s immediate
ecosystem. She also critiques the conservative media and the entertainment industry that decides what the people need to
consume, what they need to think about, and what should be in trend. She relates this briefly to consumption of fashion, and in a
major way to the consumption of food. In Animal Vegetable Miracle, Kingsolver observes the post-War boom in American
culture, which particularly reflected in the consumption patterns of food. She notes that from being a product of land and culture,
food has been turned into an industrial product. She analyses the rapid proliferation of supermarkets and fast food chains, and the
trend of having all kinds of food products, fruits and vegetables being made available throughout the year irrespective of season
or geography. She calls this industry the “profit driven food industry” (17) owing to the massive amounts of fuel required to
processes, store, and transport these food products to different places. Another threat that she finds in this regard is the destruction

1
Miller, Kenneth R. “America’s Darwin Problem.” in HuffPost. 11 April, 2012. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/darwin-day-
evolution_b_1269191; National Center for Science Education.“Background on Tennessee’s 21’st Century Monkey Law” 25
February, 2016. https://ncse.ngo/background-tennessees-21st-century-monkey-law; Thompson, Helen. “Tennessee’s Monkey Bill
Becomes Law.” Nature. 11 April, 2012. https://www.nature.com/news/tennessee-monkey-bill-becomes-law-1.10423

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 18 P. Rajitha Venugopal

of many local food cultures and a threat towards homogenizing cultures at the cost of human health and that of the planet. She
finds these processing units as serious detriments to the health of people, land, air, water etc. In the same vein, she talks about the
CAFOs (Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations), many of them spread across the Mid West. This industry makes use of vast
areas of fields for the cultivation of corn and grains that are used as cattle feed, and not to address human hunger. These cattle
then are used as meat in fast food. Prior to this, vast areas of forests in the Amazon forest in South America are cleared and used
as cattle ranches, which also result in displacement of people, cultures, local economies, and instead fatten up the profits of the
meat industries.

It is a matter of environmental racism where the elite industrialists set up factories in places that assure them low
cost of production and labor, and lenient environmental laws. In most cases, such units are set up at places populated by the
minority communities. While Kingsolver does not directly talk about the Global South, she talks about her immediate and
familiar geography of the American Southwest, where she witnesses this. Holding the Line discusses the role of women,
working class Hispanic housewives supporting their husbands on a strike against a mining company for polluting the river
which they use for their sustenance. In another essay titled, “In the Belly of the Beast”, she describes a visit to a missile
museum in Arizona. She describes what she saw and what they were told at the museum as follows:

A ring of Titan II missiles, we were told, encircled Tuscan from 1962 to 1984. The Titan II was “conceived” in
1960 and hammered together in very short order with the help of General Motors, General Electric, Martin Marietta, and
other contractors. The launch sites are below ground – “safely protected from a nuclear blast. Titan II can be up and out of
its silo in less than a minute, hurling its payload at speeds of over 15,000 miles per hour nearly halfway around the world.
(208)

This is a place in Arizona which is predominantly populated by working class Mexican Americans, and many
native American reservations, which are also incidentally the sites chosen to hold nuclear tests. She goes on,

In Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, Texas, the Great Plain, and many more places we aren’t allowed to know about,
real live atomic bombs stand ready. Our leaders are hard pressed to pretend some foreign power might invade us, but we
are investing furiously in the tools of invasion. (213)

In her novels Bean Trees and Animal Dreams there are references to the Sanctuary Movement which intended to
give illegal shelter to the refugees fleeing political crises in central American countries, which in turn was propelled by
American foreign policy, American funds and weapons – a part of these funds come from the citizen’s tax money as well
as profits made from chemical and manufacturing industries that wreak havoc on the underprivileged people’s lives and
their ecosystem.

Kingsolver also talks about the condition of the rural agricultural communities in the Southeastern states, who
have lost their jobs and farms to agribusiness, and impoverished lives are made worse every year with the occurrence of
thunder storms, cyclones, hurricanes, and floods. This is the condition of the people, some of the margins within the United
States itself. The nation and its industrial capitalist political economy represent a power centre that does not care for its
own citizen let alone the citizens of the world.

While she meanders seamlessly from one topic to another unraveling the interconnectedness of issues, which she
primarily discusses in the case of America. However, with globalization, the same effects and formats trickle down to the

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 Interconnectedness of the Local and Global in Kingsolver’s Select Writings 19

Third World countries as well, because these geographies are also the market that American global economy has been
thriving on. For the profit of a few transnational business owners of the Global North, the lives of the people in the Global
South are endangered through perpetual economic exploitation and ecological vulnerability. The United States’ refusal to
ratify the Kyoto Protocol and the decision to withdraw from the Paris Agreement comes as a massive threat, particularly to
the people of the lowing lying islands of the Global South. This is also highly discussed in the debates on the disparities
and iniquities between the Global North and the Global South.

Climate change is a global phenomenon which has its manifestations in different local regions across the
globe. There are debates about the inequity of distribution of risks and benefits, as the Global North contributes the
most to carbon emissions and the risks are faced by the Global South which faces multiple challenges such as
economic dependence, ecological dangers, and in much cases political instability. Though Kingsolver does not
directly discuss the effects in the Global South, she discusses the case of some of the marginalized communities in
America - such as the poor white farmers of the South, and the working class immigrant families of the Southwest.
For instance, the farm families in the American South face the dual or multiple dangers of a) failure of subsistence
economy resulting in debt and economic deprivation, b) effects of climate change, especially the coastal states in the
form of tornadoes and hurricanes c) a dis-empowered social system with people wallowing in “backwardness”
although there are modernized and industrialized urban areas, which in turn increase the disparity between people in
society.

While the problems Kingsolver discusses with respect to the interconnectedness of the socio-cultural, political,
economic and the ecological present quite a remorseful picture, Kingsolver shows that this awareness of the
interconnectedness can be translated into personal responsibility and ethics as means to initiate, if not explicitly great
changes, at least as small acts of resistance or as efforts to mitigate or minimize harm.

Karen J. Warren defines her ecofeminist philosophy based on the awareness of an interconnectedness
between the oppression of women and Others (other human Others and the non human Other nature) perpetrated by
what she refers to as “the logic of dominance”. She notes that this dominance is unjustified and has to be resisted
with a counter narrative. She identifies eight types of interconnections at various levels such as the philosophical,
conceptual, historical, linguistic etc. Therefore, from the premise of this interconnectedness, she vouches for a new
ecofeminist ethic – an ethic of care that entails love, friendship, and community feeling. In place of the logic of
domination that is centered around an ethos of violence, callousness and irresponsibility, Karen Warren’s ecofeminist
philosophy constitutes a care-sensitive ethic based on the logic of love, caring, mutual respect, friendship, sharing,
community feeling, and diversity.

What Karen Warren calls the logic of domination is perpetrated and kept intact and made stronger by the day.
This political economy is dominated by the transnational conglomerates driven by the motive of profit maximization. They
are serve to propagate the ideology of what environmentalists terms as Cornucopia which further drives the indiscrete,
utilitarian and exploitative approaches to nature, with the false notion that resources are limitless and limitless progress is
desirable and attainable (Garrard 16). They impose themselves on smaller economies, through the metanarrative of
“progress for all”, jobs for all, or efforts to eliminate hunger in the Third World (as the project of Green Revolution had
promised).

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 20 P. Rajitha Venugopal

As opposed to the logic of neo-imperial proxy domination, Arjun Appadurai advocates the mini-narratives of
resistance through what he terms as “grassroot globalization or the globalization from below” (quoted in Adamson
8). This need not necessarily be a globally interlinked phenomenon, but can even be small projects of resistance to
global political economy through turning local. The return to the land, and the call for sustainable development has
been suggested measures to minimize the impact of indiscrete measures of industrial capitalism in the world. This
has also been perceived as a mark of distrust of the Big industry and the Big government, and as a sign of faith in the
initiatives of indigenous collectives or grassroot organizations where people come forward to protect their
environment because it is also about protecting their lives and their children’s future. E. F. Schumacher, in his
seminal work Small is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered, asserts the need for initiatives to boost economies
which is also important in terms of the social and ecological point of view. He argues for the need to revise economic
policies such that profit maximization does not become blind to the conditions of the people. P. Sainath’s work and
rural reporting, compiled in Everyone Loves a Good Drought, provides painful demonstrations of the blindness of
economic policies to the plight of the common farmers, who are brutally implicated by an economy enmeshed in the
global trade policies. Vandana Shiva’s writings affirm the need to reclaim traditional agricultural practices and food
cultures based on crop diversity, from the clutches of the big industries that has imposed monocultures. All these
ideas point towards moves to turn to the local with an awareness of the global, and with a sense of responsibility of
how small initiatives could possibly make a difference in the long run.

Kingsolver’s ecological ethic is informed by all these ecological thoughts, which she displays in her writings with
a view to what Appadurai calls as the globalization of the dissemination of knowledge (quoted in Adamson 9). Following
the tradition of Rachel Carson, Kingsolver makes use of her educational background in biology and evolutionary ecology,
and democratizes the awareness of interconnectedness of ecological and cultural issues in an idiom that is not esoteric, but
accessible to common readers. She advocates discretion in one’s consumption patterns, producing/ cultivating seasonal
food as opposed to buying from the supermarket. From her own experience of her family’s experiment as documented in
Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, and through her agrarian vision in the introduction to Essential Agrarian Reader, she endorses
initiatives such as Community Supported Agriculture (CSA), local consumption which includes buying from the farmer’s
market, which will help the farmers survive, depending on one’s resources, and finding a sense of responsibility towards
one’s immediate ecosystem and land.

Thus, as opposed to the attitude of NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard), which is popular, especially in elite, urban
spaces, Kingsolver exhorts her readers to begin action right at our backyards, or in the neighbourhoods, so that, at least it
amounts to small steps towards saving the immediate habitats, which in turn will have positive impact on globally. One of
the limitations of Kingsolver’s ecocritical approach is that she writes from the First World and elitist perspective. But, she
herself acknowledges her privileges and says that knowing that she is privileged, compels her to be responsible as well.
She rests her hope in the commitment towards small acts of making informed choices based on the awareness of
interconnectedness – both as individual and collective responsibility to oneself, the others, and the earth. Although some of
her writings do celebrate the beauty and wonder of nature, and her own privilege of being able to enjoy it in different
geographies, her essays are not merely narratives of escapades and eulogy, but firmly grounded in the local place not in a
parochial sense but with an awareness of the larger world.

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Interconnectedness of the Local and Global in Kingsolver’s Select Writings 21

REFERENCES

1. Adamson, Joni. “Coming Home to Eat: Re-imagining Place in the Age of Global Climate Change.” Tamkang
Review, vol.39, no.2, June 2009, pp.3–26.

2. Banu, J. M. VOICES OF ECO CRITICISM IN BARBARA KINGSOLVER’S ANIMAL DREAMS. International

Journal of Research in Humanities, Arts and Science, 34.

3. Buell, Lawrence. The Future of Environmental Criticism: Environmental Crisis and Literary Imagination.
Blackwell, 2005.

4. Carson, Rachel. Silent Spring. Houghton Mifflin, 1962.

5. Commoner, Barry. The Closing Circle: Nature, Man and Technology. Cape, 1972.

6. Garrard, Greg. Ecocriticism. Routledge, 2004.

7. Guha, Ramachandra. Environmentalism: A Global History. Penguin-Allen Lane, 2014.

8. Kingsolver, Barbara, Steven L. Hopp, and Camille Kingsolver. Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life.
Harper Collins, 2007.

9. Kingsolver, Barbara. “In the Belly of the Beast.” High Tide in Tucson. Harper Perennial, 1989, pp. 227–245.

10. “A Fist in the Eye of God.” Small Wonder. Faber and Faber, 2002, pp. 93–108.

11. Flight Behaviour. Faber and Faber, 2012.

12. “A Forest’s Last Stand.” Small Wonder. Faber and Faber, 2002, pp. 75–87.

13. Holding the Line: Women in the Arizona Mine-Strike. Cornell UP, 1989.

14. “The Patience of a Saint. Small Wonder. Faber and Faber, 2002, pp. 41–49.

15. Sainath, P. Everyone Loves a Good Drought. Penguin, 1996.

16. Schumacher, E.F. Small is Beautiful: A Study of Economics as if People Mattered. Blond & Briggs, 1973.

17. Shiva, Vandana. Earth Democracy, Justice, Sustainability, and Peace. North Atlantic Books, 2015.

18. Waren, Karren J. “Taking Empirical Data Seriously: An Ecofeminist Philosophical Perspective.” Ecofeminism:
Women, Culture, Nature, edited by Karen J. Warren. Indiana UP, 1997, pp. 3–20.

19. Ecofeminist Philosophy: A Western Perspective on What it is and Why it Matters. Rowman & Littlefield, 2000.

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 22 P. Rajitha Venugopal

AUTHOR PROFILE

P. Rajitha Venugopal is pursuing Ph.D from the Department of English, Jamia Millia Islamia. She is working on the
writings of contemporary American author, Barbara Kingsolver. The title of the thesis is “Presenting An/Other America: A
Study of Select Works by Barbara Kingsolver. Her M.Phil thesis was titled “Narratives of Dispossession and Reclamation
in Narayan’s Cries in the Wilderness. The thesis was a study on select short stories of Narayan, who is the first published
Adivasi writer in Malayalam. Rajitha has presented papers on various topics, specially on ecocriticsim in Kingsolver, and
in the context of Kerala - in national and international conferences. She has also written papers that have been accepted for
publication as chapters for books, to be published by reputed international publishing houses. Her areas of interest include
ecocriticism, political ecology, postcolonialism, Indian writing, regional writing, caste, and narratives of resistance.

NAAS Rating: 3.10 – Articles can be sent to editor@impactjournals.us